“Genocide In The Americas: Extermination In The Most Subtle

Form”

Created By: Andrew Lougheed

Presentation Focus

Problems of Well Being:

Destroying our Minds, Bodies, & Communities

Problems of Human Diversity:

Globalization and the Loss of Cultural Identity

Gender Inequality

Modernity of Colonization

Settlement of Europeans in the West brought an active participation in stripping aboriginal identity

Genocide does not have to be destructive, extermination of a group but it can also be seen through a prolonged, subtle series of acts against humanity

Acts of Discrimination Towards Aboriginal People

Indian Act: ultimate goal was the removal of identity.

Aboriginal Women: faced hardships as their maternity and motherhood practices were systematically removed through western colonization.

Land Claims: most subtle form was threw the unlawful land claims along with horrifying acts against humanity aboriginals faced on the reserves.

Where Genocide Presents Itself:

Historical Description of Matrilineal Systems

A group of families often shared a common female ancestry, & lineage through the mother, not the father. Inherited the clan of their mother.

Aboriginal women were seen equally in the community, where their vision and wisdom was important for the family unit.

Women had the ability to vote, voice opinions and own property along with the responsibility of maintaining the domestic sphere & nurturing for her children.

European Settlement

European’s began to settle, the Eurocentric patrilineal system brought an end to the individuality of women where the, “Fire burning within them went out”.

Development of the ‘Indian Act of 1867’ deemed Aboriginal women as property of their spouse & minors in the eyes of the government.

Eurocentric system defined those to be true Indians as ‘males’ with Indian blood & women were only considered to be Indians if they married such males.

No longer had the right to vote, hold official office in the community and their mobility was subject to the laws of the Indian Act.

Indian Act of 1867

Most profound sections of the ‘Act’ enabled government to take Aboriginal women’s identify away.

Stripped of status if the married non-Indians, “loss of status included the loss of honour & prestige Iroquois women once held in their society”.

The discrimination Aboriginal women will be personified through the following examples: The state of health, violence among Aboriginal women and their over-representation in Canadian penitentiaries.

Aboriginal Women Hardships

Aboriginal women have been affected by alcohol, & substance abuse, rape, domestic violence & suicide most notably.

Aboriginal perspective on rape is that it’s a ‘cultural norm’, those who are “property” of man are subject forces of evil he is capable of inflicting.

To dissipate the pain & suffering of abuse, alcohol serves to blunt such trauma. The decimation faced by women forced off reserves comes in the form of poverty, lack of resources (skills, education) necessary to become an established member of society. Alcohol/ substance abuse then becomes byproducts of such injustices aboriginal women are forced to cope with.

Alarming Effects of the Indian Act

Most alarming effects of the Indian Act is the over-representation of Aboriginal women who are federally incarcerated.

“Less the 2% of the population of Canada consists of aboriginal women; however they make up 32% of the population of women serving time in federal prison.

Reasoning Behind High Levels of Incarceration

Aboriginal women witnessed; violence, rape, regular sexual assaults, murder, watching mother regularly beaten during childhood, this is the underlying factor to criminal activity.

Being deemed as “property”, the inequality, non-identity many women faced caused them to resort to violence & crime, as their socioeconomic progress was restricted.

The Canadian judicial system often labels these women as offenders & fails to recognize them as victims of long-term.

Often few facilities near to home to serve their sentences, & sent to far off distances. The separation from their families, access to resources & violations of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms Aboriginal Women face furthers such discriminatory practices.

Aboriginal Life Practices Destroyed

Women were put on pedestals, for they were life producers, sacred by all means. This made the process of child birth the most sacred part of indigenous peoples way of life.

Indigenous people did not have pharmaceutical remedies, doctors & hospitals.

Instead of doctors, they had midwives, whom were a huge part of the community and were apart of the pregnancy process from beginning to end

Europeans Settled

With the European invasion came educated people; lawyers, teachers and doctors.

The medical community saw the Aboriginal way of maternity as a threat, they felt it was in the best interest of indigenous people to implement rules and regulations.

Midwives became illegal, it was illegal to deliver a baby when not in the presence of a trained professional.

Civilized & Educated Professional Practices

This was extremely problematic, replacing midwives with western medicine because of the huge cultural and language gap between the two groups.

In order for a women to have a child she had to travel to a hospital, which were usually very far off the reserves. They were also completely foreign to the language and practices used by these civilized and experiences doctors and professionals.

In many cases they were taken advantage off. Women would go into a doctors office to deliver a baby or have a check up and come out completely sterilized without being told or given a reason.

This was the colonizers way of “fixing” the issue of these people living on Canadian land in the manner that they did.

Summary

This presentation only gives a very brief overview of the troubles and hardships faced by aboriginal peoples, dominantly the perspective of Aboriginal women. Colonization brought the destruction of the ways of life lived by the Aboriginal people threw the laws guided by the Indian Act of 1867. They were forced to follow patriarchal system which was rooted in Eastern civilizations, In doing so the Aboriginal people have and continue to face major barriers of discrimination.

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